Faulty Data Floods Fbi: Audit

12,000 Bad Reports Daily Spur False Arrests, Suits

August 26, 1985

WASHINGTON — At least 12,000 invalid or inaccurate reports on suspects wanted for arrest are transmitted each day to federal, state and local law-enforcement agencies, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation projections.

The estimate of faulty reports was based on continuing FBI audits in a dozen states. The audits also indicated problems with about 7,000 reports each day concerning stolen vehicles and license plates.

Thousands of state and local law-enforcement agencies provide the inaccurate information to the bureau`s National Crime Information Center. The center was established to give police speedy notice of whether a person stopped for a traffic offense is wanted on criminal charges in another jurisidiction or whether a car has been reported stolen.

Law-enforcement and civil liberties experts say invalid or false information can endanger officers and hurt ability of the police to control crime and the freedom of citizens. The FBI said that such concerns have led the bureau to push state and local officials for more accurate records. The audits are another step in that direction, the FBI said.

More than 60,000 state and local agencies provide most of the information to the National Crime Information Center, which police use nearly 400,000 times a day.

Dozens of cases have become known in the last few years in which inaccurate information, including faulty warrants and wrong height, weight and date of birth data, has contributed to the arrest and detention, sometimes for days, of innocent people.

For example, two years ago, Sheila Jackson Stossier, an Eastern Airlines flight attendant, was jailed wrongfully for almost three days by several Louisiana law-enforcement agencies on the basis of a Houston arrest warrant in the national communications network. The warrant was for a suspect with a similar name, and Louisiana officials failed to check Stossier`s passport and other identification that would have shown she was not sought.

FBI rules require computer records to be checked with the source, but that apparently was not done in Stossier`s case.

Also, the Houston warrant was for a misdemeanor and should not have been in the system. Suspects usually cannot be extradited from one state to another for misdemeanors.

Stossier and people in Michigan, California and New Jersey have sued, charging that their constitutional rights have been violated by law-enforcement actions prompted by inaccurate or misleading information.

Though the FBI is auditing the communications system that transmits those records, the bureau has not tried to collect information on the number of people who may have been wrongly arrested or detained because of inaccurate information.

David Mitchell, head of the FBI`s auditors, said the bureau did not have sufficient data to provide absolute numbers about the percentage of flawed reports transmitted by the FBI.